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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

 Fairy Drop

- Fates Collide

Date Reviewed:
July 18, 2016

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Standard: 1.65
Expanded: 1.5
Limited: 3.13

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale.
1 being horrible.  3 ... average.  5 is awesome.

Back to the main COTD Page


aroramage

Fairy Drop: it's a Fairy-based Super Potion that's a slight bit weaker without detaching Energy. 

...I mean, what more is there to say? If you run Fairy-Energy based decks, it can work out as an alternative healing property, and in a very specific Fairy-deck it can even add a lot to one's damage, but outside of that, what else can you use Fairy Drop for? 

Limited healing, limited Energy type to work with. It's meh at best, except in Fairy decks where it's decent. 

Rating 

Standard: 1.5/5 (unless in a Fairy deck where it's a 2/5) 

Expanded: 1.5/5 (I mean, unless it's that ONE Fairy deck) 

Limited: 3/5 (then it's more like, 3/5, probably) 

Arora Notealus: AND WHAT IS THAT ONE FAIRY DECK YOU MAY ASK? 

Next Time: LET'S FIND OUT!!


Otaku

Fairy Drop (XY: Fates Collide 99/124) is the last Trainer for us to review from XY: Fates Collide.  There were several others released, but they are either Spirit Link cards or reprints.  The former aren’t really worth reviewing while the latter might be worth a re-review eventually, but with a pending rotation that probably works better later and not sooner.  Trainers play a huge role in your deck even if you could theoretically build a legal deck without them; said deck would just be really bad.  Items are the one kind of Trainer you can play as many of in a turn as you wish, barring other card effects, costs you can’t meet, etc.  So they don’t have to be overly powerful in order to be useful.  Fairy Drop allows you to heal 50 damage from a Pokémon with any [Y] Energy attached.  This draws a natural comparison to Potion and Super Potion; the former heals 30 damage from one Pokémon with no additional requirements or restrictions while the latter heals 60 damage and then discards an Energy from one Pokémon (if there is no Energy attached, you still heal 60).  Having a [Y] Energy attached could be all but a given, impossible, or somewhere in between.  Some decks could be tweaked to make it more likely but some really have no room for this mini-combo.  Rainbow Energy or similar cards can help as they will provide the [Y] Energy required to be a legal Fairy Drop target.  Still the natural choice for this card is in a Fairy deck and therein lies the rub. 

The current top Fairy deck is the one often referred to as Rainbow Road or Rainbow Force, built around Xerneas (XY: BREAKthrough 107/162).  The thing is it is barely a Fairy deck as the entire point is to have as diverse a Bench as possible to fuel the damage for the “Rainbow Force” attack on Xerneas.  Healing 50 damage from it or an alternate attacker may be nice, but finding room for it seems unlikely as the you’ll want those slots for cards like Fighting Fury Belt which up the max HP on Xerneas in the first place.  I’ve not run the deck though so perhaps I am wrong.  Though no longer a top deck, a well known and established archetype (with multiple variants) is the one built around Aromatisse (XY 93/146) and named after its Ability “Fairy Transfer”.  Being able to move around [Y] Energy would make it almost impossible to whiff on the requirement for Fairy Drop but now we have a different problem: multiple superior healing options.  Max Potion removes all damage counters from one Pokémon at the cost of discarding all Energy attached to said Pokémon, while AZ is a Supporter that returns a Pokémon (but nothing attached to it unless you count Stages of Evolution) back to your hand.  Their drawbacks are easily bypassed in Energy Transfer decks, and if they weren’t enough you also have Super Scoop Up (which does bounce the Pokémon and all cards attached to hand) or Super Potion as again, all drawbacks are handled via Fairy Transfer. 

Looking at what healing tends to see successful competitive play in general really makes it clear.  Few if any current, top decks use Potion or Super Potion because we are at a point where you need to heal all damage to really matter; damage output is such that OHKOs and 2HKOs with plenty of overkill are the norm.  If you heal 50 damage with Fairy Drop and the healing or change in HP doesn’t help trigger an effect, then it has to change the turn count for KOs to actually matter and right now, a one time healing of 50 damage often doesn’t.  Even where it does, another card is competing for the same slot which again is why the more generic healing cards aren’t being played.  So this card isn’t going to see much (if any) successful competitive play in Expanded or Standard, though perhaps it will have a chance post-rotation.  In Limited it will depend upon what you pull.  There are 10 Fairy Types in this set, with only two as non-Evolving Basics and half (including those two) as Rare or better cards.  All but one look decent to great for Limited play though, and even if you get none of those are don’t think they are worth running, Fairy Garden also would give you a reason to run a few basic Fairy Energy cards to trigger its effect while meeting Colorless Energy requirements.  Fairy Drop is included as a single in the Sky Guardian Theme Deck, and while using it on the PTCGO I did find myself healing my non-Fairy Types as or more often than my actual Fairy Types with it. 

Ratings 

Standard: 1.75/5 

Expanded: 1.5/5 

Limited: 3.25/5 

Theme: 3.5/5 

Summary: Another card that is a bit too niche and perhaps a bit too weak.  The requirement to have a source of [Y] Energy attached for Fairy Drop to heal 50 could be made to work in a variety of decks, but it just isn’t worth the effort in most to heal just 50 damage, especially when so many attackers will score a OHKO (so you never get a chance to heal) or a 2HKO with overkill (to the point that the 50 didn’t make much or any difference).  Be nice if it did just a little more, though perhaps there is something that can make use of it. 

That isn’t me being coy; the card in question is being reviewed tomorrow but I haven’t really considered it so I’m just making an allowance that it might find a home there.  I’m thinking “probably not” at this point though.


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